A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, May 27, 2007
Acts 2:1-12
Today is both Pentecost and Memorial Day Sunday. This has also been a week with many examples of the power of Fundamentalism in our world. One of the pillars of Fundamentalism – whether political or national, whether Christian, Muslim or Jewish – is the absolute confidence that you know the Truth. Anyone who has a different perspective is wrong at least to some degree. Your mission is to convert others to understand the Truth as you do. The Rev. Jerry Falwell’s funeral this week, the deepening tragedy of Iraq, the dozens of wars around the globe, the suffering of refugees – many events point us to the single reality that Fundamentalists of every persuasion are fielding their armies and endangering our world.
What does the Good News have to do with such realities in our lives? The short answer is that my faith helps me live in this complicated world. Without it I think I’d crawl under a rock. I’ll compare it to wearing eye glasses. You have your eyes checked and get a pair of glasses and are stunned at how sharp everything looks. Then, over time as your eyes change the world gets out of focus again – but so gradually that you ignore it and put it off until you really can’t stand it. You get another pair and once again can see clearly – and you want to kick yourself for putting up with the old ones for so long.
The same is true of Christian discipleship – at least for me and for many of you. The Gospel gives me the lens for looking at God’s world and at my life. But clearly, my understanding of the faith grows and changes over time. It’s an unfinished symphony.
Some Christians would vehemently deny that the faith changes. Jerry Falwell, whose funeral was just last Wednesday, told us that Jesus Christ is that same forever; that following him is about using the right words and defending the Faith against its enemies and detractors.
He also preached that this shaking of the world’s foundations is the dawning of the final age – the last act before the ultimate showdown between Good and Evil, the battle of Armageddon that will close human history then ultimately will lead to the righteous reign of God. He told us that we’d better get right with Jesus or we’ll be left behind. He pointed to places in scripture, like today’s reading from Acts, that support that view. He knew God had shown him the Truth and he judged and labeled everyone who saw it differently.
I certainly agree with him that the world as we’ve known it is coming to an end. The old ways that nations, religions and cultures have related to each other are changing. I also know you and I may feel frightened by these shifts because we’ve been sitting in the seats of power. As Americans, Christians, and mostly Caucasians we’re among the most blessed people in the world’s history.
But changes are happening. More and more people are coming to the table and asking, even demanding, their share of the feast. I believe God sees it and knows it must happen. I believe somehow this new age is about our becoming a world in which war and starvation, hatred and oppression are finally subdued by the common human cry for justice and peace, guided by the active presence of God.
Maybe that’s why I’ve always appreciated James Russell Lowell’s old hymn that says: “new occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth; they must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.” {Once to Every Man and Nation}
The Pentecost story, written in a time of fundamental change, offers insight. This is probably the most familiar chapter in the book of Acts. We often speak of this event as the birthday of the Christian Church. Remember what leads up to this story: after the resurrection Jesus appeared to his disciples and remained with them 40 days – no healings, no public miracles, but a persistent, nurturing time to encourage and empower the eleven who would carry on the mission.
Then in the first chapter of Acts we read that the apostles stood and watched in amazement as Jesus was simply carried up to heaven – the Ascension. Two men in white robes said to them “why do you stand and stare at the clouds? He will return again in the same way.”
Ten days after that – (50 days after Easter – hence the Greek word pente) the disciples were gathered together and the Holy Spirit touched them. Something like tongues of fire came down on each of them and they began to speak in different languages. There were devout Jews in the city who had come from dozens of distant places for the festival.
And here’s the critical part: though the apostles were all from Galilee and all spoke Aramaic, the Holy Spirit of God spoke the Truth to each one of the Jews using the language and vocabulary of each. This speaking in many languages is different from glossolalia or “ecstatic speech” that Paul presents in his letters. {See New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X, pg. 55}. The Spirit of God spoke, and through these Galileans the Word of Truth was translated into diverse languages so everyone gathered there could understand. Verse 8: “how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?”
God didn’t say “Aramaic is my official language; Jesus is my only messenger.” Maybe I’ve got this wrong – but I think it says right here that God speaks in every language and saves everyone who calls on the name of God (vs. 21).
Now hold onto your seats: doesn’t this challenge us to consider that our world’s religions are really just different languages – each trying to describe the same mystery and wonder, the same holy One? And, and, if that’s true, could it be that all the arguments and fights about religious Truth are no more important than an argument whether English or French is the “true” language?
These few verses break open the reality that our old world view has been binary – either this or that, either win or lose, either agree with me or face the consequences.
The familiar idea that any one faith, any religion, can fully know and express the mystery and wonder of God is simply disappearing. It’s as foolish as saying that there’s only one right language, and that our job is to convert everyone else to speak as we do. When we portray the world as a battlefield where only one can win and all others lose, we’re betraying the very nature, the very message, of God.
With our different languages we can express the same Truth in different ways. We’ve all heard, for example, we have only one word for “snow” in English, while the Eskimos have dozens. Why? Because their lives and livelihood depend on expressing clearly and concisely what the snow conditions are like. That was in my mind when I remembered a poem by Mary Oliver, entitled The Esquimos have No Word for “War”:
Trying to explain it to them
Leaves one feeling ridiculous and obscene.
Their houses, like white bowls,
Sit on a prairie of ancient snowfalls
Caught beyond thaw or the swift changes
Of night and day.
They listen politely, and stride away
With spears and sleds and barking dogs
To hunt for food. The women wait
Chewing on skins or singing songs,
Knowing that they have hours to spend,
That the luck of the hunter is often late.
Later, by fires and boiling bones
In steaming kettles, they welcome me,
Far kin, pale brother,
To share what they have in a hungry time
In a difficult land. While I talk on
Of the southern kingdoms, cannons, armies,
Shifting alliances, airplanes, power,
They chew their bones, and smile at one another.
The vocabularies we use, the languages we speak, the ways we encounter and express the Holy – these are the essentials of any faith. I would never suggest we try to erase the distinctive nature of Christianity or any other religion. Each has its place – each has its devout believers.
The framers of our Constitution understood that the freedom to practice our religions without pressure, coercion, or interference, is at the heart of all our freedoms. It has never been more important than today as religions and cultures, nationalities and languages, overlap more than ever before.
The old order is changing. The Holy Spirit is telling the truth in many different languages. For example: in 2005, in North Carolina, a Muslim woman called as a witness in court, was told that she had to be sworn in, by placing her hand on a King James Bible and swearing to tell the truth. The ACLU filed a suit challenging this and just this past Thursday in Raleigh, North Carolina, Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway ruled that people of non-Christian faiths must be allowed to use religious texts other than the Christian Bible when being sworn in as jurors or witnesses in state court proceedings. He wrote: “The highest aim of every legal contest is the search for the truth. To require pious and faithful practitioners of religions other than Christianity to swear oaths in a form other than the form most meaningful to them would thwart the search for the truth.” (Click here to see the report.)
The old order is changing. The Holy Spirit is telling the truth in many different languages. Another example: this past week Pope Benedict XVI clarified (but did not apologize for) remarks he had made while traveling in Brazil last month. He had infuriated people in the Latin American countries when he referred to the 15th and 16th centuries colonizers from Europe, saying the natives in Central and South America “welcomed their European colonizers because they were ‘secretly longing’ for Christ ‘without realizing it.’ Conversion to Christianity ‘did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture.’” [http://www.latimes.com]
The old order is changing. To live in this new world we must resolve to listen for sounds of the Spirit and to be open to them. Like the apostles at Pentecost so long ago we have to remember that God’s truth will be spoken in many different languages and may even come to us from the most unlikely prophets.
To live as Christ’s people in this new era, I think we must honestly measure our convictions by the question: “what delights God?” If we really intend to walk in the ways of Jesus, God’s purpose must be at the heart and core of whatever we know to be true. Ultimately all truth belongs to God, and we, the creatures, must do the best we can to express the inexpressible and listen to others languages.
I pray we can capture that sense of living with Christian confidence rather than resorting to Fundamentalism with it’s false certainty. And we can do so by recalling the witness of scripture:
• That God is both an abiding presence and a mystery beyond all expression
• That we’ll speak of God in different languages, but none is sufficient
• That God is love
• That this loving God wants us to live in community, in peace, and in harmony
• That all who worship and praise God, no matter by what name, are sisters and brothers empowered by the Holy Spirit.